It seems rather mean to name Kari Lake to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and then order everything she runs to be dismantled three months later.
There’s no disputing that the Voice of America’s leadership has made some egregiously bad decisions in the not-so-distant past — see our Jimmy Quinn’s reporting about VOA here, here, and here. As the Editors laid out in a July editorial, U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Amanda Bennett’s “performance is sadly representative; she has allowed VOA to drift toward being just another left-leaning news outlet. Congress needs to use every tool at its disposal to right the ship.”
On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order eliminating the non-statutory functions of U.S. Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds and oversees Voice of America and on Saturday, all employees of Voice of America and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio Televisión Martí, were put on administrative leave. In addition, the administration severed all contracts for the privately incorporated international broadcasters it funds, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
The most recent article on Voice of America’s website is from March 15. Live streaming has ceased on certain channels.
But if you get rid of Voice of America and these other institutions, as much as it might feel good to punish reporters and leaders who covered global events on the taxpayer’s dime with a left-wing slant, we’re stuck with a world where Russia, China, and Iran are flooding the globe with propaganda and lies and we’re outgunned in the messaging war. I greatly prefer a reformed and refocused U.S. Agency for Global Media — one focused on telling the truth and America’s side of the story — to not having one.
And while I’m far from a big fan of Kari Lake . . . it seems rather mean to name her to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media in December, and then order everything she runs to be dismantled three months later.
On March 15, Lake issued a statement declaring, “I fully support the President’s executive order. Waste, fraud, and abuse run rampant in this agency and American taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund it.”